Petrol to Open Retail Stores in Ljubljana, Kranj, Celje and Maribor

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The company is also said to be interested in GoOpti, AvantCar and the Lon bank.

STA, 6 April 2018 - Petrol, a leading energy company in the country, is planning to expand its retail business to include shops in city centres across the country. The first shops will open in Ljubljana, Kranj, Celje and Maribor by the end of May.

Petrol will offer regular retail products, at the same time enabling its customers to pay their bills and place sports bets, among other things.

Shelves and services will mirror those of Petrol's filling stations, which already make the company the third biggest retailer after Mercator and Spar in terms of revenue.

The company has told the STA that it wanted to expand its business from filling stations to city centres. Each shop will have ten workers, according to Petrol.

But the newspaper Finance writes on Friday that Petrol seems to be tapping into other fields as well, eyeing the transport business, car-sharing and banking.

The paper reported last week that Petrol, which in recent years expanded to the electricity retail market, was considering buying GoOpti, a company providing shared and private transfers to airports and between towns.

The company has also purchased a Croatian gas company and a wind farm operator, and invested EUR 2.2m into a hydro-power plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It also plans to enter the real-estate business by building two commercial buildings, according to the paper's information.

Last year, Petrol acquired a company specialised in non-cash payments mBills.

Reportedly, the company is also interested in the car rental company Avant Car, which plans to switch to car-sharing.

This is in line with Petrol's commitment to sustainable progress and e-mobility, the company told the paper, noting that it had been among the first to tap into the market in 2012. In 2015, Petrol opened the first universal electric car filling station at the BTC shopping district.

Reportedly, the company is also interested in the banking business and is eyeing the Lon bank. The reason why it would like to acquire the bank is reportedly because it wanted to get a licence for banking services to connect this to the services of mBills.

Last year, Petrol generated EUR 538.3m in revenue from merchandise sales, but plans to raise the figure to EUR 719m by 2020.